The ARRL tells the story of two different true DX adventures. The first is the story of Danny Weil and his attempt to sail around the world. The second is the story of a husband and wife set of HAMS who travelled all over the world in an attempt to operate their HAM station from every country in the world. Both of these HAM adventurers were ambitious and while neither ultimately achieved their lofty objective each did remarkable things with Amateur Radio.
Danny Weil was not a HAM when he began his odyssey. He was talked into getting his HAM license in London by an avid HAM who told Danny that HAM’s all over the world would be excited to talk to him while he was sailing around the world and he could give them their much desired contacts from foreign countries on his trip. Danny decided this was a good idea and attained his HAM ticket, then started off on the big adventure. On his way he was shipwrecked twice and managed to go through four versions of his Yasme sailing vessel. He never did get all the way around the world but over a period of over 10 years he did make thousands of other HAMs happy as he talked to them from hundreds of countries. The authors detail Danny’s sailing difficulties and his problems getting authority to operate from the countries he visited and they tell the tale in an interesting way.
The roughly second half of this volume deals with the story of Lloyd and Iris Colvin. Lloyd was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army National Guard retiring after 22 years then taking up construction making over a million dollars. HAM radio was his hobby from early youth and when he married Iris she got her HAM ticket and also became an enthusiastic HAM hobbyist. Since they had made their fortune and could afford to indulge they began the ambitious quest to visit and operate from every country in the world. They did not manage to visit them all but they sure made a good chunk of them. Along the way they managed to work over 100 different countries from almost 100 different countries within which they operated achieving DXCC recognition over and over for each of them. They had been turned down for permission to operate from country after country but they remained persistent and were able to get permission for most of them. Their greatest effort seemed to be their visit to all of the countries within the Soviet Union at the time of the cold war. They were very persuasive and pleasant ambassadors for our country.
These two adventures are certainly of great interest to most Amateur Radio hobbyists, especially those of us who have been bitten by the DX bug. But the stories come over a little disjointed and amateurish. The author hops around from short story to story and many of them don’t seem to conclude or even make any sense sometimes. But then life is kind of like that and this book is definitely about a piece of life.
For those of us who will never be able to travel and operate our HAM stations from hundreds of different countries this book is the next best thing. High adventure for the DX HAM’s among us. I give “Yasme” a 7 of 10 on the Weaver meter. Don’t read it unless you are a HAM however, you probably would not “get it”.
